List building for realtors and entrepreneurs is simple, not easy but not hard either! Everyone talks about the need to build a list if you are going to do any marketing, whether via the internet or by direct mail. Everyone says that you should add to that list on a daily basis. Well, as annoying as they are, I agree with everyone! Having a list, mostly targeted to your industry is the most powerful tool you have in your business. Here are my top ten tips for growing and nurturing your list!

Top 10 List Building Techniques

• NUMBER ONE AND MOST IMPORTANT – READ THIS IF YOU SKIP EVERYTHING ELSE! Make sure you are proud of what you send out to your list, every time. I have a newsletter that focuses on marketing for entrepreneurs and realtors. It takes me about 4 hours, 2 days per month to do my newsletter. I am ALWAYS proud of what I am sending and have very few people request to be removed from my list.
• Having a list means needing a database. Your database can be an excel spreadsheet or huge CRM product, either way you need to be able to contact those people on a regular basis. Include First Name, Last Name, Address 1, City, State, Zip, Email and Phone at a minimum. Find out more about what a small business database is!
• When you are starting out, ADD EVERYONE! – I had a conversation with a client yesterday and he questioned the viability of adding someone you know that has no connection to your business. I have had the most referrals for my business from a friend who has never purchased from me. You never know who your friends and family know who might be a customer.
• As for a business card from EVERYONE you meet. We often give our card to people and forget to ask for theirs. Add those people the day you get them and start them on an autoresponder series (see below) to keep yourself fresh in their mind
• Autoresponders (or drip marketing) are series of messages that you send to people after putting them in your database. They give information about your business and can gently sell your product or service. Most database programs allow you to set up autoresponders, if you are using Outlook, make a task to send out messages for at least the next few weeks to your new person.
• Places to get new list members #1 – I get LOTS of new list members by teaching! Offer a prize and collect business cards or send a sign-up sheet around to all the attendees. Make sure they know they will be added to your list!
• Networking Groups – Go to meetup.com and search for local groups you can join. Talking directly with humans is a GREAT way to get people to add to your database!
• Social Networking – Using Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn and Twitter is a great way to build your list. DO NOT add everyone who “friends” you. From time to time put a link in that encourages them to sign up for your newsletter.
• Your Sphere – I know, you have added EVERYONE from your sphere already but have you thought of your doctor, lawyer, accountant, church members, gym club friends, your spouse’s friends, your kid’s friends parents.
• Last but not least – NEVER SPAM YOUR LIST! EVER! Recently I had someone belittle me because I wouldn’t take an “opportunity” to sell something to my list. Well…I didn’t believe in it, it didn’t match my list and I declined. I have NEVER regretted not sending something to my list and will never send anything I am not proud of!

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How can hiring a virtual assistant help your small business? Well let me tell you about MY day:

• 3 Client Phone Calls – 1.5 Hours
• 2 Fun Phone Calls – 1 Hour
• 2 Calls to cancel services – 1 Hour
• Submitting Sites to RSS Feeds – 2 Hours
• Errands – 1.5 Hours
• Writing Blog Post – .5 Hour
• Emails to 2 Virtual Assistants to do what would take me 10 Hours (I am paying them $50 total) – 15 Minutes

Did you catch that last one? 15 Minutes and $50 to get 10 HOURS of my life back?!?!? Time to lead generate, consult with clients, talk with friends, ANYTHING BUT doing 10 hours of work!!!

If you are in real estate, I have a great post over on active rain with lots of VAs that are ready to help now (http://activerain.com/blogsview/958318/Real-Estate-Virtual-Assistants-Anyone-have-a-good-referral). If you are a small business owner with a great virtual assistant please let me know and I will be happy to post them here for everyone to know about!!!

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The single-most question I get is “How will social networking make me money?” I am SO not qualified to answer this BUT I can tell you how it has helped my business!

Social Networking Makes You More Approachable

I teach classes and am very aggressive about what I think people should do to grow their business (sometimes even when they don’t ask…:) I have great ideas BUT not everyone likes that IN YOUR FACE information. People who would like to have the info without all the grief can join my networks on www.Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com or Twitter.com and watch without the hype. (I am Taradactyl on all of these and would be your friend – just ask!)

Funny things sometimes happen too! On facebook, someone from my high school class posted our senior picture and I am on there dressed in black – I still dress in black and take a lot of grief for it BUT that makes me more accessible to people who don’t know me BUT who might want to buy my services.

Social Networking Lets You Help People

The other day my business friend Maggie Morris’ Iphone lost my number. She had a situation that was important and needed to reach me. Because she is my friend on facebook, she could send me a message that came to my email and I called her right back. How cool is that?!?!?!

People can watch what you are doing and can copy it. If I find a great new site that could help get me new business, more than likely I will be posting something about it online. If you are in my network, you will see it and be able to take advantage of that opportunity.

Social Networking Is, Well, Social AND Ranks Well On Search Engines

There are many things that you can add to your profile which will be found by humans AND by the search engines. I hear all the time that you need to have backlinks to your site to make it more google friendly. One of the easiest ways EVER to get backlinks to your site is to make them yourself. In your profile make sure to add your website!

Join some groups that you like! In class yesterday Frank was truly puzzled by why he should take the time to join a network. Well Frank sells real estate AND likes boating. People who like boating buy houses on the water. Houses on the water cost more than houses not on the water. Connect the dots!

Anyways….there are some reasons, if anyone out there has better, more comprehensible ideas please feel free to jump in…:)

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So I was at a Philanthropy lunch today with one of my favorite people, Tammy Leventis of Mail Marketing. On the way over I was telling her to hold on to her hat because we were gearing up to help even more people with the Thrive Program and she was going to be super busy (she provides the printing and mail services for our premier clients).

She was thinking that she should start sending something out too (you think?) BUT she did not have her people in a database. In addition to that she did not know what email program to use. I suggested a couple to her and she said that she would have to wait until she had her people in some kind of order. 

SIGH

If this is your thought you will NEVER have everything ready in order to start. You will never take 3 days of your life to data-entry all your contacts into a program. You will never look up all the emails from all those business cards. You will never start!

So what should you do? Start with what you have! If you use Gmail or Outlook or many other programs, just by typing a letter you will get a list of people by that name that you can email to. When I am sending out “special” emails to my internet friends I use this method. When I am just trying to hit my personal contacts I use this method. The glorious part of it is that all those people are my friends! They never yell at me for sending them anything – sometimes they may delete me without looking at it – but they never scream spammer at me!

The next best thing is to start with an excel or database program (here is a good post to read – What Is A Small Business Database?). Enter 5 people every day. At first it will be easy because you will have a backlog of people, but soon you will have to actually TRY to find people to enter into it! Make it a game to figure out who should be in there – your doctor, vet, lawyer, hairdresser, the mailman, your family, friends, networking contacts, co-workers, even old flames!

Can I make a suggestion? Start with The Thrive Contact System even though you are not ready. Try it and see if you get more business – the majority of our clients do! Make enough money off the people that you DO have in it to hire someone to do your data entry. Stop figuring out why you can’t do lead generating and just start! TODAY!

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So I talk a lot about how to use your small business database. Many small business owners do not know exactly what a database is. It can be as broad as a full-blown contact management system to a Excel spreadsheet with names and emails. I am going to review the good and bads of different kinds of databases. Please feel free to chime in with your opinions!

Excel Spreadsheet – If you do not have your contacts in any order yet, an excel spreadsheet can be a god-send! All you need to do is start collecting names, addresses, emails and maybe even have a field for notes. The benefit of an Excel Spreadsheet is that it is easy, you can cut and paste email addresses into almost any email client and it is super easy to make labels from! The drawback to an Excel spreadsheet is that it is hard to set up times to call people or schedule emails to automatically go out. Click here to download a sample contact spreadsheet!

Outlook – Most computers come with Outlook. It is great for mananging your contacts, exporting mailing lists and sending emails. You can schedule tasks for yourself and there are many add on systems for Outlook out there. Here is a list of some neat add ons (here is a Google Search for Outlook Add Ons).

Databases – A full blown database that you are committed to will change your life! It will tell who you to call, when to call them, who to email, when to send out your letters and so much more. You can set up “campaigns” or “plans” that will send out periodical emails or set up tasks for you to do. Many times these are called CRM or Customer Relation Management.

There are MANY different databases that cost NOTHING (EssentialPIM and FreeCRM are two).

There are great mass market databases like ACT, Goldmine, and Wise Agent for Realtors (my personal recommendation – even for non-realtors!) They generally charge a per month fee and are online. That is great since you can access your clients from anywhere – not so great if your internet is down.

The database I use is CLP – it is a relational database that does LOTS of things but you have to set it up yourself! It has MANY features like HTML emails, project plans, sales force automation and multiple users. It is NOT cheap and it is hard to use sometimes BUT everyone asks so I thought I would tell you!!

Whatever you use, remember that you want to make sure that you can export your contacts out of it in case you want to change vendors. Also – it does you no good if you don’t put your people in it!!!!

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